


dreaming of you

by bythunder



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-31 03:15:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15110672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bythunder/pseuds/bythunder
Summary: “I have this recurring dream, about a girl who looks just like you, named Lyanna. We dance at some feast, but she always manages to leave me before I can kiss her. Then there’s a joust, and some knight crowns her with blue roses, and everything after that…”“…is war.”“Yes.”





	dreaming of you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ayuminb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ayuminb/gifts).



> A birthday fic for my favorite!!

The first time it happens, Lyanna blames it on the movie she fell asleep watching. Some pseudo-historic, bodice-ripper of a period drama, set sometime in the late third century.  It’s only natural that the dashing young knight, muscled like a maiden’s fantasy, would make an appearance in her dreams. Calling her  _‘Lady Lyanna’_  as he held her close in his arms as they danced together at some feast.

But the dreams continue, night after night. It’s not always the same scene, but it’s always the same man. One good nights, it’s the feast. Laughing and flirting, music and dancing. On the bad nights, there’s war and violence, the smell of blood and roses and a pain that wakes her up screaming. But worst of all, the dreams she cannot bear, are the ones where it is quiet and dark. He comes to her, bearing a torch in one hand and fistful of flowers in the other. He lays the flowers at her feet, traces the curve of her cheek with his thumb, and he cries. He cries and the sound rends her heart to shreds, but she can’t move. Can’t speak. Frozen, still as a statue.

It’s a good dream that takes her tonight, though. Lyanna opens her eyes in this dream world and she can tell immediately. It’s amazing how strong the sensations are, how vividly she can smell the food, she can actually taste the wine. And her suitor, so she’s come to think of him. She knows every detail of him by now. The dark wash of his hair and his bright eyes. The way he would grin as he approached as he approached her table and bow to her as he asked for a dance. She can feel the color rise in her cheeks as she accepts his hand —she still doesn’t know  _why_  it is she blushes for him, because gods know she’s not a blusher when awake— and he leads her to the floor.

And even more powerful than the physical sensations where the emotions she felt in the dream. This man was charming, he set her heart fluttering,  _she loves him, she could very well love him,_ but there was something else, something holding her back. Even in the happy dreams, even as he held her in his arms and she could feel the heat of his body against hers as they danced, there was a darker emotion lurking, a certain…  _fear_  of him, reservation. She was holding herself back from him, scared of what being in love could mean… That feeling, she never quite understands, no matter how many times she has that same dream.

It’s gotten bad, lately. Even when awake, Lyanna can hardly think of anything besides those dreams.  She’s started keeping journals on them, and a pen beside her bed so that she can write down every detail come morning. She’ll find herself daydreaming at work, trying to fit the pieces together. How do the good dreams connect with the bad? Is there some larger picture she’s missing, some overarching narrative that weaves it all together? Or is it just him?

“It’s him.”

“What?”

“On TV, there. Lya, isn’t that the guy you keep drawing in your notebooks?”

Dacey pulls Lyanna’s attention from her daydream to the television mounted against the wall. Some movie was playing, not one she recognizes because she’s never cared much for superhero flicks, but  _him_ , she recognizes  _him_  immediately. The face from her dreams, her mysterious suitor. That chiseled jaw, that thick, dark head of hair, those eyes… She can practically feel him, his large hands circling her waist, the feel of his muscles ill-contained beneath his doublet as they dance, and—

“Wh-what’s his name? That actor?”

“Robert Baratheon. C’mon, Lyanna, you’ve heard of him before, right?”

“Uhm, possibly? What would I have seen him in?”  _Other than my dreams._

Dacey rolled her eyes. “I don’t know, you have shit taste in movies, Lya. But he’s been everywhere lately. Hollywood’s Hottest Hunk, at the moment.”

“A well-earned title,” Lyanna mutters under her breath even as she begins to google search his name. _Robert Baratheon._  The name sounds familiar on her tongue, tugs at some corner of her mind, but she cannot recall having heard it in her waking life before.  Dacey is right, her taste in movies does tend to differ from the mainstream and this actor seems plenty mainstream. Superhero movies, a couple of romantic comedies, some sports biopic… Nothing Lyanna would’ve watched. With a shrug, she closes IMBd.

But the thought doesn’t leave her, it nags at the back of her mind all day.  _Robert Baratheon_. A name to the face. Except, why would she keep dreaming so compulsively about some actor she barely knew? There’s no doubt about it, that is the face she’s been dreaming about, she sure about that the next time she falls asleep. But even if this man slipped his way into subconscious somehow, why is it always some medieval feast, why the war and the blood? Shouldn’t she be dreaming about him in those dumb superhero tights?

If anything, having a name only seems to make it worse. While the dreams had always been vivid before, now it seems as if she can’t escape them. It feels like… they’re almost more real than her actual life. As if, were she to let it, she could stay in them forever, live in this fantasy world and never wake up again, content in this dream life. And that, it’s terrifying. Because she feels it, a part of her -a large part, if she’s honest- genuinely considers staying there.  

She begins taking sleeping pills not long after. Assured by her doctor that they’ll knock her out in a dreamless sleep for a full eight hours. And it works, in a way. It’s been almost a month since Lyanna’s had a dream of any kind. She’ll take her pills and in a blink, it’ll be morning. However, invariably, she wakes feeling tired,  _wrong_  somehow. Even coffee doesn’t help erase the feeling, and she’s up to six cups a day.

Lyanna feels on the edge of going crazy. Absolutely exhausted yet terrified of sleep. And she can’t explain her problem without sounding like some kind of lunatic,  _I think I might’ve been lovers with a famous actor in a past life_. One way ticket to the looney bin, that was.

It has to be the sleep deprivation that makes her do what she does. She sees a poster for some comic geek convention in town,  _Robert Baratheon’s_  face on the poster, and immediately buys a pass. She’s never gone to anything like this before, never had any interest, but the website said you could do a meet-n-greet, autograph signing with any of the celebrity guests for fifty dollars, and that seems like a small enough price for her sanity. Either to reclaim it or let it go entirely, she’ll find out when she gets there.

The line to meet him is long. She fidgets anxiously as she waits, hopping from one foot to the other. She tries to drown out the chatter of the other women around her, all gushing about how attractive he is, how sexy was he in that spy movie, how  _big_  his muscles are,  _bet he’s big all over_. Lyanna tries not to listen to them, because they made her doubt herself, her intentions here. Was she any better than they were? So what if she hadn’t watched the movies, wasn’t she here because she was infatuated with some fictional version of him she created in her head?

But before she has the time to change her mind, someone pushes her forward to a table and  _there he is_. Looking exactly the way he had in her dreams. And suddenly, Lya forgets how to speak.

“Lyanna?”

“What- Oh! Uhm, yes. Hi. I-”  _I am making a fool of myself._  Honestly, what was she expecting coming here? What did she mean to say to him? Gods, this was a giant mistake, so embarrassing. “Could you sign this, please?” She mutters, handing over the cheap poster she bought, just as an excuse to come all this way.

“Absolutely,” he says with a smile that makes her knees weak. “I’ve been signing shit all day, I’ll sign anything that holds still long enough.”

Lyanna stares at him blankly until it registers that he was making a joke and she forces herself to laugh. “Ha, yeah.”

He signs his name quickly, a result of tons of practice no doubt, but when he passes the paper back to he, he doesn’t let go. He drops his forced smile and looks at her, intently, and there’s something almost like… recognition in his eyes.  _Could he know?_  Is it possible that he—

 _That’s it, Stark, you have officially lost your mind!_  She bites down hard on her bottom lip, bringing her back to the present. She manages to say a quick, “Thanks,” as she tugs the poster from Robert Baratheon’s hand and rushes towards the exit. The moment she leaves the convention hall, she crumples the poster in her hands, screams in frustration,  _anger_  at her own stupidity, but as she’s about to throw the wad in the garbage, something catches her eye. What Robert had written.

_To Lyanna, the girl of my dreams._

And that’s when she realizes… she never told him her name.  _The girl of my dreams,_  she tries not to read too much into that, maybe he writes that on every pretty girl’s poster, but… it seems like a mighty big coincidence, seeing as she knows she never said her name. But he did. Too big a coincidence impossible to ignore.

She tears that bit off the poster and tosses the rest before marching back into the hall. She slips past the line, managing to sneak in without paying another fifty dollars to see him again, and makes straight for his table.

As soon as she gets close, she slams her scrap down on the table. “What the hell does this mean?”

“I’m sorry, miss, you’ll have to wait your turn— Oh, it’s you again.”

“It’s you again,” Lyanna says in a mocking tone. “How did you know my name?”

“Wh-what?” Robert chuckles, forced, to diffuse the tension. “You must’ve said—”

“I didn’t. I know I didn’t. So how—? And… why did you write that?”

“Lyanna…”

“Tell me!”

“Because I thought you were a dream come true.” Robert leans back in his chair and runs a hand through his dark hair. “Literally. I know that sounds insane, or like a bad come-on, but it’s true.”

Lyanna swallows hard.  _That’s not possible._ It’s not possible to have a shared delusion with a total stranger! She’s really gone off the deep end now, she must be halluncinating or something, because this is impossible. But then he keeps talking, and it gets harder and harder to deny.

“I have this recurring dream, about a girl who looks just like you, named Lyanna. We dance at some feast, but she always manages to leave me before I can kiss her. Then there’s a joust, and some knight crowns her with blue roses, and everything after that…”

“…is war.”

“Yes.” Robert looks her in the eye then, and she can feel it, she knows that spark of recognition she thought she saw before, it was genuine.  _He’s telling the truth._

“I have the same dream.”

It’s then that the crowd of paying guests behind her begin to get rowdy and Lyanna has to go. But not before she takes the pen from Robert’s hand and scratches her phone number across his palm.   “If- if you ever want to talk about those dreams.”

Robert held his hand to his chest, reverently, protecting the still-drying ink. “I will, Lyanna.”

The impatient masses can wait no longer, they don’t understand the significance of what’s happening between them, and Lyanna is shoved rather unceremoniously out of the way. She knows she can’t make it through that line again, and even if she did, what’s the point now? She had already met him, already knew what she needed to know.  _And he said he’d call._

As soon as she walks away, she feels like an idiot for giving him her number. Not that she doesn’t believe him about the dreams, because she does. He can’t have lied about that, not with that much detail, not when those details line up with what she herself has seen. But, gods, he’s famous. Coordinating recurring dreams or not, she’s a nobody, and likely came across as delusional. Why would he give her the time of day?

But he does. Just as she’s getting ready for bed that night, she receives a call from an unknown number. She puts the phone to her ear and before she can even say hello, she hears the voice of Robert Baratheon asking,

“So what do you think it means?”

“I think it means we’re both crazy,” Lya responds, a smile creeping across her face.

They talk all through the night, sharing their dreams, finding connections, overlaps, trying to find the meaning in it all. That night, Lyanna falls asleep to the sound of his voice and in her dreams, she allows her handsome suitor to kiss her after they dance.


End file.
